Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – Lost Weekend
#quotefromthe80s
It took a lost weekend in a hotel in Amsterdam
And double pneumonia in a single room
And the sickest joke was the price of the medicine
Are you laughing at me now, may I please laugh along with you?
#LostWeekend #LloydColeAndTheCommotions
A trip to Amsterdam was the generational goal for many of us Dinosaurs of the 80s, who often tried and succeeded to organize it as a school trip, with the easy justification that they spoke a very good English up there, and there we could see Anne Frank’s house, crooked houses, canals, polders, the Great Dam, and much more.
We were not at all, on the other hand, interested in coffee shops and the Red District, and neither were all those professors who enthusiastically accepted the role of tour guides and who often warned us when we were missing cocktails at the hotel bar or lent us the jacket when the customs dogs forced us to a quick shirtless visit to the local border office.
Of course Amsterdam was in the heart of every 80s Dinosaurs all over the world for the same reasons, so it happened that someone wrote a song dazzled by attending one of his premises (like The Church, with the wonderful Under the Milky Way) or by a weekend, lived as a sort of early The Hangover movie, or this beautiful pop outing, like Lost Weekend, included in Easy Pieces, the second album by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, a peculiar group for lyrics and sounds (not by chance born around a University, in Glasgow).
The group had made its way in October 1984 with that great album called Rattlesnakes, which contained the masterpiece Perfect Skin, a song written clearly with some inspiration from Bob Dylan. In fact, Lloyd Cole, even after the beginning of his solo career, will always remain halfway between Dylan and some excellent crooner performances, probably with the same spirit that made him call Sean Penn “Mr. Madonna” and thanks to which he declares that the success of a professional career is measured by the value of the hotel room you can to occupy.
In the video clip, an upset Lloyd complains after waking up in a single room of a hotel in Amsterdam, with his clothes smelling like smoke, with the pen of “Miss Lonelyheart” and a love tattoo on the palm of his hand, with double pneumonia and, above all, with the medicine bill. And there was no one to blame but himself.
The grooved style of the piece is typical of those years and recalls other (then) young artists, such as Housemartins and The Smiths, but also the story in the video clip of Send My Heart by Adventures. The singer’s clothes are iconic, especially the jacket with large shoulder pads.
Lloyd Cole on Wikipedia
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